Dan-Ball Wiki talk:Update Guide
Starting discussion of this guide :I thought about writing some ToDo guides, which lists everything you might have to do for an SR update. For example: "New weapon: edit this, edit that, check here, change here, upload here, ..." and the same for enemy, stage, compo item. It might be a good help, especially for other authors, that we don't forget something and have a consistent state in the wiki. :--Justme2 12:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC) ::My guide to editing the SR Wiki (see User:Bewnt/Guides has the Todo for items and weapons (as a matter of fact, I followed it today xD). That's a good idea, but where will you place the Todo guide? --bewnt 13:22, 5 December 2008 (UTC) ::: I found a Manual of Style in the Category: Organisation in the "Dan-Ball Wiki" Namespace. I also added my Manual of Categorization there. We could place the "ToUpdate" lists there, or we can do it in the subcategory Category:Site maintenance, which I would prefer. I would also add some more stuff to the list at the category description, to make it a good start point for every work at the wiki, if you don't already have a specific focus. --Justme2 13:43, 5 December 2008 (UTC) ::::Hmm, I'm clueless as to where to start. But I'll see what I can do about this, and hopefully unload the guide on my user page to the manual page. --bewnt 13:58, 5 December 2008 (UTC) :::::I just had a look at your guide. I like it very much. I agree with everything you've written, and I only have very few additional comments. I would suggest to call it "Quick Guide/Manual/Whatever" or something like this and place it at a similar place like the manuals above. We could remove the "Items, Weapons" section and start an separate "Update guide" based on this. Or you can rewrite the Manual of Style, which was given by default at the wiki creation. ::::::I like the Update guide idea, we shall implement it. Do we need to append a prefix to the article title, or just call it "Update Guide"? As for rewriting the manual... it's default, so it should be rather good, no need for rewriting. All we need to do is to add stuff that pertain specifically to our Wiki. --bewnt 14:24, 5 December 2008 (UTC) :::::And I think I am able to figure out how to place a link like "Help" the in the sidebar for "Organisation", or how to change the four bullets on the right side below the edit window, because otherwise our stuff might get lost. And we should of course cross link all those style guides a little bit more.--Justme2 14:12, 5 December 2008 (UTC) ::::::It would be good to place organisation and help into the sidebar. As for the four bullets below: retain the second and third ones (Manual and categorise). The other two can be replace by other stuff if you wish, though I'm unsure about what you want to place in it. Style guides.. never heard of them... --bewnt 14:24, 5 December 2008 (UTC) Monaco Sidebar Is there a need to update the sidebar in the event of a new weapon/item/enemy? Especially for the weapons and items, since we're not listing all of them out. --bewnt 01:47, 6 December 2008 (UTC) : Oh, right! I have forgotten this. I'll remove/change this. --Justme2 01:52, 6 December 2008 (UTC) Update problems with superlatives, restrictions, and small lists It's getting more and more difficult to maintain all pages. Many problems are caused by superlatives (strongest, most expensive, northernmost, ...), restrictions (the only, all, except for, ...) or small in-paragraph-lists, which nobody thinks of. For example I wouldn't have thought that this update (Cavern 1) could create a problem to the Castle page, but it did (thx to Toudou1620). Also you have to read the full Stage article every time to keep it in a complete state, because theres a lot of stuff which easily can be wrong after an upload. First we should be more carefull when using the mentioned phrases and do not include them if they are not necessary or of little worth to the reader. Nobody is interested in the "second northermost" stage, or the "second most expensive book", or the "second whatever". And obvious stuff like the northermost also doesn't have to be there at all. Second, we could create "update warning" markers. This could be realized by using a template which does not create any content. For example "Template:update warning". The purpose of such a template is, to include it on every page, which might have a problem with future update, and you can do this right at the possition where the problem is. The template doesn't have any effect to the page itself, but now you can use the list . (Maybe there is also something like invisible categories. We could also use those. I have to read the markup manual again.) We could create markers like , , , . This of course doesn't solve the real problem, but it makes it much easier to check after an update a limited number of pages which have a high risc being wrong now. On the other hand it's some work to mark everything, and to try not to forget to add them. Opinions about this? --Justme2 16:29, 20 February 2009 (UTC) : I do understand that certain stuff, such as northernmost, are unneccessary. However, I think we must accept that there are changes to be made every update. Most other wikis do not have to deal with such frequent updates, so we have to live with it. Those markers you suggested are unneccessary and highly tedious. :I'll give an example. See Green Smiley Wheel. At the end of the article, there is a link referring to Yellow Smiley Wheel. If another Yellow Smiley Wheel is created and we are forced to rename them, would you ever think of a reference of Green Smiley Wheel from Yellow Smiley Wheel? You wouldn't, and same goes for me. We can't remove this just to make it easier for our updates. :The only feasible method to solve this is to have a decently-sized author base. This increases the average number of times a page is read, and in turn, increases the chance of finding an error. :On the same note, I'm glad that someone brought this topic up, because I still feel that there is absolutely no need for a whole list of weapons on the individual class pages (eg. Boxer), when we have weapon pages (eg. Gloves) that cover and list them all. --bewnt 16:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC) :: The renaming in your Green Smiley Wheel example is not a problem, because if you have a link, you always have , and there is the Green Smiley Wheel. Just today I renamed the old Yellow Skull Fish to Orange Skull Fish to make room for the new Yellow Skull Fish and I used this list. And I also did it with the Orange Smiley Walker. You just have to move the page, which creates a redirection link at the old name and then check the list for this page, before reusing it and creation new links to it. :: I don't see the problem with weapon list at the class pages. Another example are the lists in each species page and head page (e.g. Skull and Snake). It's just one step you always have to do for each weapon. It's fixed, and it's in the list, and you will not forget it, if you follow the list, or use it to check afterwards. I don't think the edit of four extra pages is much work. I don't see the problem in a lengthy update guide and a lot of steps. I see more the problem in the high risc of forgetting something. Stuff like the castle statement will never appear on any list. :: I see the problem of my "update warning" template idea more in the poor efficiency. We would have a warning on nearly every important page and maybe it goes up to one fourth of all Stick Ranger pages. And how many of them are really an issue for an update? Maybe five, or ten? And it's still not guaranteed that you won't miss anything. And if you want to use the warning markes you have a lot of extra work to maintain them and keep them correct, because otherwise you can't trust them. --Justme2 02:17, 21 February 2009 (UTC) :: Btw: There is a solution for the problem with the redundant information! It's called and would be an extenstion which is available on Wikia. I didn't take a close look but the main idea is, that you can use so-called properties on a page and set them to a certain value. And you can create fully automatically generated lists based on these properties. For example the Snake page would only have a command to list all enemies which have property "species" set to "Snake". Advantage: If you create a new page for a new snake enemy you wouldn't have to update any list, because you only set the properties and every else would go fully automatically. And also the reader can use an advanced search based on properties. I'm not sure how it really works, and if it's simple. I don't know which are the disadvantages (maybe performance, and maybe more confusing to new authors), and whether it is worth a try, or if this is just overkill. We should ask somebody who knows how to use it. --Justme2 02:17, 21 February 2009 (UTC)